


Out of the Evergreen Garden

by lostboywriting



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21750037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostboywriting/pseuds/lostboywriting
Summary: There's something familiar about this woman. Saionji just can't quite work out what it is.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Writing Rainbow Green





	Out of the Evergreen Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elijah_was_a_prophet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/gifts).



It's a cold late autumn weekend afternoon that Saionji steps into a little tea shop he's never visited before and sees her, sitting quiet at a corner table. She looks up, dark hair falling away from her face, and he freezes in his steps, transfixed.

He first thinks: she's older than he remembered. Then he thinks: of course she is, it's been years and years. 

And then he thinks: remembered what? _What's_ been years and years? 

There was a girl, once, who—

But that was such a very, very long time ago, so long ago he'd forgotten entirely, until just now. And whatever he thinks he remembers just now(shining green eyes hidden behind glasses, and the scent of roses and fresh earth, and—) he's not at all sure that it wasn't a strange dream.

(A castle in the sky? No. No, that can't have been right. A dream.)

The woman before him now can't be the girl he's half-remembering—she's older than he is, surely, though as soon as he thinks it he's not so sure after all. He thinks she is, but there's something hard to pinpoint about her age. Not old—her bronze skin is smooth, there's no gray in her hair—but further into adulthood than he is. Or maybe she's just worked out how to project that air, so that looking at her instinctively assures one that this is someone who has her life entirely under her own control.

She glances to the door and sees him; her shoulders stiffen, and her brow creases. She gives him a long, silent, considering look, then tilts her head to the side in something like resignment and gestures briefly at the seat across from her. There's another cup set out at the table, unused.

Unsteadily, he makes his way over to it—to her—with the dizzy feeling he's back in school, being called up in front of an examination board to take a test he not only forgot he had, but never even went to class for.

She props her chin on her hand and watches him as he sits down, and then indicates the teapot with a slight wave of her hand, inviting him to pour himself a cup. "So you did graduate after all," she says as he breathes in the welcome warmth of the steam. "Congratulations, Saionji-san."

( _From this day forward, I—_ But he blinks, and it's gone.)

A part of him wants to bristle at that "after all," as if it had been at all in doubt that he would make it through high school, but somehow he doesn't. "I know that I should know you," he says, slowly.

She shrugs. "You never did before," she says. "I wouldn't expect you to start now."

There's a strange sort of dry, placid humor to it, half knowing, half sad. Oh, gods, was she one of the ones who sent him love letters that he ignored—or openly mocked? No. No, she can't have been, she's the wrong age for that—if she's older than he is, she would have been ahead of him in school, and graduated by the time he'd gotten popular enough to start breaking hearts. A teacher, perhaps? But—no. He looks at her and remembers a pleated skirt, and a sweet smile, and—he remembers she was _important._

He can't remember her name.

"You used to wear glasses," he says, slowly. "Didn't you? And your hair up, like—" He gestures vaguely at the side of his neck.

She sips her tea. "I take it back," she says calmly. "I can see you know everything there is to know about me."

His face heats. "Forgive me. I don't know why I can't recall—"

Something pokes at the side of his shoe. He stiffens, scuffing his foot away in surprise, and looks down, and blinks. A small, furry figure—a monkey, he thinks dazedly, there's a _monkey_ in this tea shop?—brandishes a fork and scowls fiercely up at him. Saionji stares at it. "What on earth is that creature doing here?"

Even as he asks, he realizes he knows the answer— _of course the damn monkey's here, it follows her everywhere_ —and there's another of those instants of dizzy deja vu, something familiar and just out of reach. 

"...Oh." The woman's eyes widen very slightly, and she leans to peer over the edge of the table. "Chu-chu! Don't get us kicked out of the shop."

The monkey—he thinks it's a monkey—makes a face at her, and she shakes her head. "I promised the nice lady at the counter you'd behave. Stabbing holes in people's feet isn't behaving. Yes, I know it's Saionji and he probably deserves it, but even so." She glances back up at Saionji, her gaze entirely unapologetic. "You did used to kick him," she says.

Saionji struggles to find a response to this—he _remembers,_ oh gods, he remembers, and he's almost certain that the kicks were entirely justified at the time. But he can't remember why on earth there was a monkey at school, nor why it was perpetually waging war against him in particular, and even more than that he can't imagine how he could have forgotten something like that until just now. As he searches for words, Chu-chu lets out an indignant screech and leaps into a pantomime. The little creature waves the fork like a sword, making menacing faces as he thrusts and parries, then drops the makeshift weapon to spin around and play the part of—Saionji's not sure what, but it involves shrinking away and collapsing to the ground dramatically, huddling as if protecting someone. This point made, the creature springs back to its feet and jabs a finger in Saionji's general direction.

"Well, yes," the woman concedes, and takes another long sip of her tea. "There was all that, too."

There was all _what?_ There's a horrible familiarity to the whole tableau, but Saionji draws himself up and rallies, as best he can. "I'm not sure exactly what I'm being accused of," he says stiffly, "but if this creature is yours, I request that you get him under control—"

"Oh, no, he's not mine," the woman says, mildly. "He's a friend, who does as he likes." She turns back to the monkey. "If you get us banned from this shop like you did the last one, though, Utena's going to be upset. She likes it here."

Chu-chu chitters angrily, and the woman sighs and presses the heel of her hand to the side of her head for a moment, as if she's having trouble finding a counterargument. "Well, even if he did," she tells him.

Utena. Saionji knows that name, too—it brings back a memory of something old and ugly curdling in his chest, resentment and jealousy and a burning humiliation and—

_the clang and scrape of real swords, metal against metal, with the promise of the castle hanging overhead—_

He blinks, and shakes his head dazedly. The woman watches him, and says nothing more, and takes a sip of her tea.

A little warily, he asks: "Even if I did what?"

Her smile is lopsided, twisting at the corner. "I wonder if you would believe me if I told you, now."

He remembers swordfights, and a castle in the sky, and _a monkey at the school,_ and he's got evidence glowering straight up at him that at least the last of those was real. In this moment he has the disorienting feeling that he would believe almost anything, but before he can say that, the woman adds, "Still, for whatever it's worth, I am glad you got out of your coffin in the end. Eternity is overrated."

The words hit him in the gut, and he stares at her, and the response slips out of his mouth unbidden: "But you, too, once desired—"

_something eternal. The castle hanging overhead, and her glasses shining as she gazed up at it—_

Blink, and he hears himself whisper: "You—you told me that once. I remember..."

He remembers a coffin, sliding open.

He remembers the _crack_ of his hand hitting someone's face, too, and he wonders why.

"Oh, Saionji-san," she says as he trails off. "I told many people many things that they wanted to hear. You realized that, eventually." Again the crooked smile. "But nobody really stays who they were in high school, once they get out. Thankfully."

"Who _are_ you?" he manages weakly.

"Now? A normal girl, living a normal life." Something in her smile turns secretive, as if at some private joke. "With her entirely normal prince. And who are _you_ now, Saionji-san?"

"I—" He flounders, somehow, for an answer. Saionji Kyoichi, but she already knows his name, and still hasn't given hers. He has a good job, offered to him by a local firm after he graduated Ohtori's college. He still trains in kendo, of course, though with the demands of work he hasn't been as active as he was in school, but he makes good money.

A normal man, living a normal life, he supposes—and he was satisfied with that, until he stepped into this shop just minutes ago—but he looks at her now and remembers a car racing at impossible speeds through the night, the thrum of the engine pulsing through him, and he has the sudden sense that he's lost something immense, something vast and powerful, some magic beyond his comprehension. 

It's the way she said that last bit, perhaps: _With her entirely normal prince._ Calmly, as if _her_ normal life is some kind of fairy tale.

His—isn't. He wants to scoff at the idea as the sort of thing women think of the world—hers to adore her handsome prince, his to shield his princess from harsh reality—but there's something in her eyes that's old and knowing and not sheltered at all, and he can't look away from it.

"Well," she says when he doesn't answer, because _I don't know_ would be an absurd answer to give, "you've made it this far. You may work the rest out eventually. It's always different, once you're out of the garden."

The garden. "The garden?" he echoes, because there's something there—something he should know—but she shakes her head, then glances at her watch and rises from the table with something very slightly like relief on her face.

"I have to go," she says. "I have a prince to meet. You know how it is."

She gives him a small, impersonal smile—

_Cheer up, Saionji... senpai._

"Good luck," she says, and somehow, as she turns away, it feels like a slap to the face. He stares after her as she leaves, and wishes he knew why.

By the time he finishes his own cup of tea, he can't quite remember what she looked like.


End file.
